Beach volleyball

A beach volleyball rally in mid-air: the ball at the top of its arc and a player stretched full out under it.

The press screenshot is taken from low and close. One player is at full stretch at the top of a jump with both hands above him and the ball hanging at the apex just clear of his fingers. A second player stands behind and to the right in a cap. A woman in a wide straw hat watches from the sand in the foreground.

The net itself is not in the crop. What places this as volleyball rather than anything else is the ball, the stance and the company; the net is elsewhere in the screenshot.

Behind them stands a white residential tower and a line of palms, which places it on the Vice City beachfront rather than in the Keys.

The staging is the detail: this is a point being played, not two people standing near a net. Whether a player can take part is not shown.

How to recognise it

• A player at full stretch at the top of a jump
• The ball at the apex of its arc, just clear of his hands
• A second player behind in a cap, and an onlooker in a straw hat
• A curved white residential tower and palms behind, on the Vice City beachfront

The frame it comes from

The frame is a still from the official Press pack, which carries no timecode. It is 3840 by 2160, and the subject occupies 652 by 734 of it. Also in it: Vice City and a lifeguard quad.

How this was measured

These figures come from the dataset, not from the prose above. We measure everything and claim what counts. How we work

What we still do not know

• Whether volleyball is playable
• Whether it has a scoring system
• Whether you can play with another character
• How many courts exist